


The Missing Piece

by beerecordings



Category: jacksepticeye egos - Fandom
Genre: Anti as the Puppetmaster, Badass JJ and Henrik, Blood and Torture, Corruption Fic, Despair, Don't copy to another site, Hypnosis, Major Abuse, Pneumonia, Sickness Torture and Stockholm Syndrome, Victory Ending, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-10-04 05:20:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20465675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beerecordings/pseuds/beerecordings
Summary: Doktor and his brothers have belonged to Anti for a long time now. It's good, he tells himself. It's the best way to live. It's the only way to live. But when Anti finally locates and kidnaps Jameson Jackson, the last man standing free, the strings around the puppets' throats are loosening fast, and they find themselves quickly torn between forgotten brotherhood and implanted loyalty. Doktor can't take much more of this pain, this life of despair and agony - but Anti does not intend to let him or his brothers go.





	1. Chapter 1

City lights rush like wind across the glass of the window, casting him, intermittently, in gold and in darkness.

Doktor stares down at his feet.

The dirty silver floor of the bus rattles against his torn up dress shoes as he shuffles uncomfortably, trying not to let his shoulder brush against that of the sleeping stranger at his side. Above the smell of sweat and someone's heavy magnolia perfume, the smoke of the city curls around him in a gasoline purr, staining his mouth with the taste of engines and fast food, dripping down his throat to sit in his lungs, in his chest, near to his slow-moving heart.

He wishes he had the strength to be annoyed.

Most everyone on the bus is silent, pressed against the backs of their chairs or the cool, vibrating window panes, worn into quietude by long days and long journeys. It's late and everyone would rather be at home, asleep.

Doktor wishes he could sleep. Sleep and sleep and sleep and sleep and sleep. Sleep and sleep and not wake up again.

The missing piece is the only one who seems to have any energy.

Glancing across the aisle, Doktor's eyes land on the boy's black dress shoes, tapping rapidly against the floor. Higher up, he sees his worn hands gripping hard at the thighs of his slacks, clenching and unclenching his fists around the soft fabric. There is blood on his white button-up shirt, but it is dark enough that no one has noticed. Small mercies.

Jameson coughs frailly. His head is still but his eyes flicker wildly around the bus, like the rolling pupils of a horse trapped in a house on fire. Doktor supposes he's looking for help. For comfort. For anything and anyone to save him.

Poor thing.

Jameson coughs again, a little louder. Doktor realizes he is doing it on purpose, trying to attract attention to himself. Not easy with a guard dog at your side. Doktor shoots him a warning glare and then sits back, trying not to look at him.

But his hands are making a small sign, over and over again, shaking but determined, stiff but desperate –

“S,” signs Jameson, his mouth quivering. “C. H – ”

A hand shoots out to snatch his wrist and Jameson jumps hard, curling back against the seat of the chair, his face losing color in the rapid-passing shadows of the city rushing past.

Red squeezes the missing piece's wrist so hard Doktor knows it will bruise black. Then he leans in, close enough that his hood brushes against Jameson's downy brown hair, and he whispers – in words only heard by his brothers – with a voice so harsh as to cut the ear –

“You so much as lift a finger and I will deliver your corpse to the dumpster personally.”

The light of a nearby casino rushes over the bus. Jameson's tears are illuminated in gold.

“Am I understood?”

“Yes,” knocks Jameson, biting hard on his lip.

Red lets him go in silence and sits back.

Doktor sits back too.

They are just passengers like everyone else.

A memory flashes across him the same way the lights do, here and then left behind in an instant.

He remembers, with a nauseating effort of the will, a happier day, with Jameson perched at his side just the same. His face was full of joy and he was smiling at him, his hands moving in rapid words now less than half-remembered. Their train raced past little white sheep in little green pastures, and Jameson spent half the trip staring at the window, slumping back occasionally to rest against Doktor's shoulder. He was as warm as an engine against him, healthy, whole, and unharmed. He called him by a name Doktor can no longer recall.

He can't remember where they were going or why. But he seems to remember that joy.

The darkness swallows him whole again. He closes his eyes and tries to forget.

It's easier, these days, to obey.

It's easier not to remember.

This is a time of pain.

Stepping into the reach of the monster is a relief so heavy it is better compared to opium than home-coming. Outside Anti's power there is confusion, fear, guilt, and doubt above all else. Within it?

Doktor steps across the thresh-hold of the abandoned house where they have taken refuge and breathes in deep, shuddering hard as the darkness steals back inside of him.

Bliss, bliss, bliss, bliss, bliss –

He wishes he could spend every second of the rest of his life in the very heart of Anti's control, mindlessly numb, overwhelmingly content, but unfortunately there is only so far his master can stretch, and so whenever he is sent away on missions like this one, he does his best to return home quickly.

Jameson seems less relieved to enter the run-down little house. His wide eyes stare at the room around him, flickering over squirming rats and patches of white mold patterned along the walls, until at last his gaze lands on Trickshot, and he stiffens as though impaled.

Trick stares right back.

“Holy shit,” he whispers, and then his mouth breaks into a smile cold enough to re-freeze icebergs. “You found the little mouse. Done running, bitch?”

Jameson flinches, turning his gaze away. Trickshot gets to his feet, approaching easily and grabbing JJ's chin, lifting his face up to the light.

“C?” signs Jameson frantically, forgetting his guardian for a moment. “What's happened to – ”

Red snatches his hands and yanks him towards his chest, throwing him off balance and then shoving him hard to the ground, where nails and an undrying moisture found perpetually on the wooden slats of the floor press against his palms. Jameson, mouth open with pain, gasps and crawls backwards, clutching at the wounds from the fight –

Trickshot grabs the boy by the back of his shirt and drags him to his feet.

Punished for speaking, Jameson makes good use of his large eyes instead, staring at what was once his brother with an undeniably agonized desperation in his eyes, reaching out to cling to the soft fabric of the torn grey shirt Trickshot wears.

“Get the fuck off me,” snaps Trick in a voice so thin he can barely be heard, shoving his hands away. He decides to grip his hair instead of his shirt and Jameson scrambles as the pressure on his scalp pulls him onto his tip-toes, his face contorting with pain.

“Poor little thing,” purrs Trick in a babying voice, still rasping from his purple-bruised throat, using his spare hand to grab Jameson's chin and tilt his head up to what little light comes from the flickering overhead. “You beat him to hell, Hoodie!”

The irony of this is that Trick is hardly better off himself. For every bruise, broken bone, and cut that Jameson's body took tonight, there is at least one match on Trickshot's skin. His master has not been kind to him. When it comes to a hierarchy, they all know where Trickshot falls – the very bottom of the pack.

Trick tries to lift Jameson off his feet, but a sudden bout of coughing forces him to let his brother go. He doubles over, shaking hands clutching at his aching chest, and coughs so deep and so hard that it sounds as though pieces of bone are being shaken off his ribs.

Doktor watches wearily, a little irritated. One more sickness he's going to be expected to fix. Red reaches over to smack the back of his head. “Do something, Deutsch!”

Yelping, Doktor grabs his smarting skull and staggers away, well wary of Red's temper. “No medicine,” he whispers, scuffing his way towards the other room.

“Oh, that's your fucking excuse? You're supposed to be a doctor!”

Doktor hides his face in his hands, cowering against the wall, but all Red does is roll his eyes and turn away, shoving Trick to the side. He heads toward the stairs, his victory only barely soured by his brothers' stupidity. “Master, I found him!” he calls, smiling as he moves down, down into the darkness of the basement. “I brought him back for you!”

Removing his hands from his eyes, Doktor turns to see if Jameson is afraid, but there is nothing in his eyes but worry. He's helping Trickshot to stay standing, rubbing warmly at his chest. Trick does not have the strength to push him away.

And then the darkness is upon them.

Jameson whirls wildly, his fighter's hands out-stretched. Doktor catches sight of Trickshot staggering away, retreating from Anti's attention. He knows it would be safer for him to run too, but he needs Anti right now – needs something to extinguish these thoughts in his head – pity and guilt and concern, all useless remnants of a time when Jack was the one who pulled his strings.

He needs Anti to make his brain stop asking his mouth to say, Jameson, I'm sorry, run, now, while there's still time –

“Arzt,” calls Anti's voice, a whisper that echoes from every side, and Doktor jumps to attention, staring around him. “Bring my new little puppy down here.”

Jameson doesn't turn to run fast enough. Doktor's grip on his wrist is tight as a blood pressure cuff.

“H-E-N-R,” he begs, and Doktor grabs his other hand and begins yanking him towards the basement, dragging him across cold cement and old bloodstains.

“Doctor, doctor, doctor,” signs Jamie again and again, using what little mobility his hands have. He has begun to cry. Doktor will not look at him. Cannot look at him. “It's me, it's me, it's me, brother, brother.”

“Child, be silent,” Doktor whispers.

He never does anything more than whisper these days.

“You will only make this harder.”

He drags Jameson down to his master.


	2. Chapter 2

“Were you a good boy?”

“I was such a good boy,” Red swears, collapsed against Anti's chest, his eyes shining with adoration. “I was so, so good. I brought him back to you, right back to you.”

“Yeah, you took good care of me.”

“I took good care of you, you'll be safe now. All the threats are gone.”

Red's eyes well with tears and he chokes, so overwhelmed with love that for a moment he cannot breathe at all. He shudders and puts his head down on Anti's shoulder, stroking a hand through his hair. “I was never going to let anything hurt you,” he promises, a sacred whisper.

“I know,” Anti soothes, running the flat edge of his blade along Jackie's throat. “I know you weren't, good boy.”

“Little brother,” hums Hoodie, daring to plant a kiss on Anti's cheek. “Little brother. I'll keep you safe.”

“I want to ask you something.”

“Yes, Anti.”

“What's the boy's name?”

“Jameson Jackson, Anti.”

“Jackson, do you like that?”

“Um, I don't know. Do I?”

“Is there anything you could shorten that to?”

“Like Jack?”

“Yeah, you could shorten it to Jack. Or maybe Jackie, would that be good?”

“Do you want me to call him Jackie?”

Anti grins, dark and sweet.

Victory tastes like blood.

“No, sweetheart,” he purrs, pinching Red's cheek. “Just wanted to check if that meant anything to you. You did so well today. You can have something to eat tonight. Alright, time's up. Get up. Good boy. Go sit with kitty for a minute.”

Simmering with pride, Red makes his way to the corner of the room and sits down at Blue's side. The cat is sleeping, chained tightly to the wall, too exhausted to wake up even for a newcomer. Red curls up fondly at his side, playing with a length of his brother's hair.

“Doc,” calls Anti warmly. “You come here.”

Doktor startles, turning to look at Anti, adorned in blood on his throne, a rotting wood chair in the basement. At his feet, Jameson Jackson is so unconscious Doktor cannot see his chest moving for air.

Anti attacked him like a shark in a frenzy.

Held him up in front of Doktor and Red and Blue one at a time and asked him, mocking, which one of his big brothers would be the one to save him now.

Promised him that it would be only a few days before he, too, was swallowed whole by Anti's power, begging like an animal for attention and affection.

Beat him until his whole face was slicked in blood and bruises.

But Jameson did not beg or cry or complain. He took it with courage. Doktor remembers, very distantly, a time when he was more courageous too. Someone was torturing him, he remembers, but he tried so hard not to give in. The details are slipping away from him.

“Deutsch,” calls Anti, a warning in his voice now. He does not like to wait.

Doktor hurries to his side.

“How about you?” he asks, getting up from his throne. He steps over Jameson's fingers. Doktor winces at a cracking sound. “Were you a good boy today?”

White with terror and relief – Doktor does not know how he can be simultaneously so happy and so scared to see someone – he manages a small nod, trying to smile.

“You brought the missing piece back to me, didn't you?”

Another nod. He can't breathe. He wants to drown. With shaking hands, he reaches out, desperate for some comfort.

“You did well,” murmurs Anti, and takes him in his arms.

It's like crashing into a river when you don't know how to swim. But the water is warm and he is little more than a corpse in its grip, sliding forward in Anti's hands, a low groan trembling its way out of his mouth.

“I did well,” he whispers. “I did, I did, I did...”

He nearly trips over Jameson and his eyes flicker down over his body, his poor face shattered into bone and blood, an agony written upon his silent mouth even in sleep, and he is small and thin and so very worn, still injured from the battle with Red, which must have hurt him in more ways than one –

“Doktor.” Anti has his mouth close to his ear, holding him tight. “You focus on me. Focus on master, there's my good boy. You like being here with me?”

Doktor sways in place, swallowed by a wave of dizziness. “Yes, of course.”

Anti takes his chin gently in his hand and lifts up his head. Deutsch meets his gaze and shudders, and then smiles, his eyes glazing over.

Anti's eyes are dark and endless, colder than the stomach of the ocean, deeper than philosophy. Doktor chokes, collapsing against him, gripping at his brother's shirt.

The day is slipping away from them. What did he even do all day? Where was he?

“Close your eyes,” whispers Anti.

Doktor obeys. He always obeys. There is no other way to live. Just drowning. Just drowning. Anti curls his fingers through the hair of his nape of his neck. Yanks just hard enough to hurt, but Doktor doesn't care anymore.

“Oh, I'm so tired,” Doktor whispers.

“I know.”

“You're the only thing I care about.”

“I know, baby.” It tooks him months to perfect this, but it's done. Doc was his, and then the others, and now – oh, and now, his last little missing piece. Jameson will be his too, soon enough, soon enough. “But listen, I need you to do something for me.”

“Yes, Anti, anything.”

“Red, you listen too.”

Red joins Doktor at Anti's side. Jealousy stings through them both, but they'll bottle up the anger for later, taking it out on each other in unexpected blows and stitches tugged too tight.

“I need time with my new puppy. He has to be broken in. You two will keep things running while I work. Okay?”

“Yes, Anti,” they promise in sync.

“Red, anyone gets too close or too suspicious, you're the one who takes care of it, alright? Doc, I want you to clean this little bitch up at the end of the day when I'm done with him. And get rid of Trickshot's fucking cough. If I have to hear him wheezing anymore I'll go chop his head off.”

“Yes, Anti.”

“Good, then. Kitty cat, go with your brothers, you're boring me.”

Blue opens pained eyes and drags himself to his feet. There is blood in his hair. Doktor doesn't remember who attacked him. Red takes his brother under his arm and leads him towards the stairs, pausing to give Anti a winning smile.

Has he always had those scars, scattered like cross-hatching across his face? Doc doesn't think so, but he can never remember anymore. He can never remember anything.

For just a second, he sees as though before his eyes Red and Blue in another life, both smiling like twins, healthy and whole, unscarred and reaching out to him, the third star in their triangulum, a little family, completely whole.

Was there a time before Anti?

“Go on, Doc-Doc.”

“Yes, Anti. But are you sure... are you sure you don't need anything?”

Anti looks up, anger flashing through his eyes. Doktor backs slowly towards the wall, turning down his gaze.

He didn't mean to question. It's just that he's a doctor. He's supposed to look after his brothers.

And Anti?

Anti looks exhausted to the core of his being.

At his feet, blood is leaking from Jameson's eyes.

“Can't believe this,” grumbles Red, pacing around the room. “Can't goddamn believe this.”

“Just give it to me,” rasps Doktor. “No use complaining.”

Fuming, Red hands over vaporub and cough medicine and stalks away again. The dull light of the paneless windows cast him in a cold evening light.

“I don't feel good,” moans Trickshot, writhing with fever in Doktor's lap. “I don't feel good, I don't feel good, I don't feel – ”

“Hush,” orders Doktor harshly, shaking his shoulders. “Hush, you will annoy Anti.”

Trick whimpers and falls into silence, but his rough breaths are scratching their painful way up from a chest that is heavy with infection.

“This is pathetic,” gripes Red, glaring down at his little brother. “He can't keep getting sick like this. We could have spent that money on food if he wasn't such a little bitch.”

“I can't handle pneumonia without better equipment. He needs to go to the hospital,” mumbles Doktor, wetting someone's spare t-shirt with what little water they have and pressing it to his forehead, opening up the chest rub with his free hand.

“Shut the fuck up,” snaps Red. “You know we can't do that. Keep him alive.”

Doktor closes his eyes, rocking gently back and forth over Trickshot's body. He stopped screaming or weeping or breaking down a long time ago, and now he just shivers and rocks and hides his face when he needs comfort, understanding that none will come.

Red and Trick tell him he's losing his mind. But it's better than living like they do, devolving into panic attacks on the daily, so desperate for Anti's attention that they can barely function without praise and direct orders. And meanwhile, Blue...

Red grits his teeth at the low sound of skin grating against wood. “Blue, cut it out,” he growls, stalking over to drag his brother's wrists away from the sharpest piece of rotting wall he can find in the house. Blue's collar jangles as Red pulls him to his feet and moves him away. “You can't even kill yourself properly, can you, kitty? Hey, hey, come on, look me in the eyes, you can do it.”

“Don't make him,” sighs Doktor, rubbing Trickshot's chest slowly. His brother stills under his hands, mumbling Anti's name in what could be dreams or nightmares.

Red sighs and sits down with Blue slumped against his shoulder, stroking his hair absent-mindedly. Blue doesn't respond. Blue never responds anymore.

“You should be more concerned about Trickshot,” whispers Doktor, in a rare show of defiance. “He's not well.”

“Don't tell me what to feel, Deutsch. Ask me, you're both wastes of fucking oxygen. Hey, maybe he will die! It could just be me and Blue and Anti... the kid too, I guess...”

Doktor shivers, clutching Trick closer to his chest. Sometimes he's scared Red will kill him. Then again, he knows better than anyone where his weak spots are – the slash in his stomach that JJ gave him in their fight, the pains in his back they never seem to go away, every trigger to send him into babbling terror, his eyes blown wide with confusion and distress, screaming about the memories he's lost –

Well. He just hopes it doesn't come to a fight.

Blue begins coughing low, low in his chest, trembling against Red's shoulder.

“Oh, not you too,” groans Red, squeezing him close. “Oh, oh, Anti will be furious if his pet gets sick. Doktor, stop it. My twin...”

“I'm doing my best with vaporub and cough drops,” growls Doktor, trying to get some water into Trick's mouth.

Downstairs, Anti begins shouting. All four of them flinch as one, and Trick's eyes flash open full of panic.

“I'm sure he's going to finish with Jameson soon,” says Red, with both adoration and terror in his mouth. “Then he'll be happier. He's just doing what's best for him.”

“Anti, Anti,” cries Trick. Doktor doesn't know if he's calling for him or calling for help. Blue has gone so stiff he could be a corpse, staring dead-eyed at the wall. If he thinks anything on his own anymore, he doesn't show it.

This is a house of pain.

Doktor stares at the pathway to the basement.

This is a house of pain.

Why does he stay?

His strings are slipping.

Anti gags on a wave of weakness and throws JJ hard to the earth, stepping down on his throat and turning away, taking deep breaths while the little one chokes.

“Glitch bitch,” signs the boy, between useless attempts to shove the foot off his neck. “Bastard, monster, virus, asshole.”

“Stupid little puppy,” croons Anti, pressing down on his throat. “Still acting like you can defy me.”

He's had Jameson for three days. It's going well with the missing piece. Everday Jameson slips closer to his control.

But the problem is he's stretching himself too thin. Even the best puppet-master can only move so many toys at once. Corruption takes power. It takes energy. Anti is running out. But he just needs to break this last little creature, this last little puppet. Just one more corruption. He will not fail now.

“I will defy you,” Jameson promises. Anti finally lets up on his throat and he draws in huge gasping breaths, slumped against the concrete.

“You do your brothers a disservice,” says Anti. “Don't you know they said the same? And now, what are they? I will make a liar of you too, little doll.”

The basement is cold as gravestone. Anti is the heater in the middle of it, radiating warmth too heavily without any of it transfering to the room around him. The only way to share his heat is to be touched by him.

He takes a deep breath. For once in his life he needs to keep his calm. He leans down and puts his hands on Jameson's wrists, falling to his knees to straddle his hips, pinning him down against the stinging cement.

Jameson turns his face away but does not protest. He is losing strength with each day that passes. Anti knows how weak to keep him to stop him from using his powers, cutting frequent blood out of his back and striking his aching head several times a day. He has not slept or eaten and any attempt to change the course of time will destroy him. He's considering it.

The moments where Anti tries to drag him under have become warm relief in the middle of the torture.

“Come here, baby,” purrs Anti, stroking his knuckles over his cheekbone, running his fingers across his mouth. “Come here, look at master.”

Jameson tries to get his hands together so he can sign the “h” that begins the word “hatred.”

Anti grabs a knife and slams it into Jameson's shoulder. Pain sends his whole body into spasms, his body contorting with agony, his eyes rolling back in his head, and he is losing consciousness fast.

“It's okay,” whispers a soft voice, and he knows it is Anti, but it could so damn easily be any one of his brothers, torn away from him, could be Marvin or Henrik or Jackie or Chase –

He is crying so hard he cannot breathe. When was the last time anyone touched him? All he's done for months is run.

“It's okay.” Anti is stroking his hair. Stroking his stomach. Stroking his wrists. He's been starving to be touched and Anti is wonderfully warm, even if his nails are overgrown and his teeth are just a little too sharp and one of his eyes is venomously black, a single green iris shining down on Jameson's smoke-grey face. “I'm sorry, I know this is scary. But listen, you're going to be with your brothers soon, right? You've missed them. Haven't you?”

He has, he has, he's been so lonely, he nods –

“I know,” sighs Anti, putting a firm pressure on Jameson's shoulders, making his collarbone ache. He smells of blood and sleep. “I understand. I can see every part of you, you know. I understand everyone and everything. It will be so easy, once you're mine. I'll take that pretty clock and tie you up like Marvin and you can be my little puppy. No one will ever hurt you again. You won't have to feel anything but this.”

And warmth and joy and relief and love come crashing over Jameson like a high, come flowing down the folds of his brain, trickling down his tongue and down his throat, and he is melting like a witch in water, sinking down into Anti's power –

“Open your eyes,” calls a voice, gentle, gentle. He is held, carried, carressed. “Just open your eyes for me. Be a good boy. It's all easy after this. It will feel so wonderful. Open your eyes, Carver.”

That's not his fucking name.

Just like Doktor isn't Henrik's and Red isn't Jackie's and Trickshot isn't Chase's and Blue isn't Marvin's, damn the glitch who stole his family away from him!

He jerks up and slams his elbow into Anti's nose, sending blood gushing from the demon's nose. Falling back, Anti lets out a horrible scream of rage, the sound that metal makes as it grinds together, and then he is up again, coming forward again, holding a knife again, and what can Jameson do but cower?

“I will teach you pain,” Anti snarls. His teeth are gritted tight and he no longer looks human. He is warm. He is too warm. He burns. “I am pain and you will know me better than you know yourself, and then, before this is over, you will be mine, and forget the taste of your own name, puppet kid.”


	3. Chapter 3

Doktor dreams of bloodshed and video games.

He holds a warm little computer mouse, shifting it across a pad on a wooden desk. Everything is bright and clear and clean. He feels well and there is coffee next to his hand.

From the speakers, a recorded cough and a splutter. A spray of simulated blood hits the other side of the screen and Doktor adjusts in his seat, reaching out to click on a button to order a lung exam for the patient.

“Don't worry now,” he narrates to the computer character, smiling at the blinking red eye of a camera near to his head. “The good Doktor will make everything better, you will see!”

The character coughs again. Doktor realizes the game has not reacted to his order. “Gah,” he growls, throwing up a hand and clicking on the button again. “Come on, dumb machine.”

Still, the game does not respond. The character coughs and then groans, doubling over for a moment, its face still drawn into an unmoving smile, dead-eyed and cold.

“Gottverdammt,” hisses Doktor, clicking once, twice, thrice. How frustrating, to know what needs to be done and be unable to do it.

“Stop coughing,” he begs, as the character shivers. “I'm trying to fix it. I will not have you die.”

The character reaches up to touch its chin and then draws away again. Startled, Doktor recognizes the sign for “please.”

“I'm trying,” he says. “I am, I'm trying. I'm doing my best. I'm doing what's right. I am, I am.”

He clicks the button. Clicks, clicks, clicks. Why won't it goddamn load?

“Stop dying,” he cries, slamming the mouse against the computer. The taste of copper is filling up his own mouth. His chest aches. A wave of heat rushes over him like sunlight exploding over the earth in the morning light. “Please, I'm scared, don't die.”

He needs to get out of the whole program – he should get out of the whole program – but how can he leave his patient behind? The others are too sick to run with him. He cannot go until he saves them. He cannot lose them! The memory of joy is sudden and present in his mind, but only for an instant, and then it is swallowed whole again by this terrible pain, pain, pain –

“Please! Let me save him!” he screams, and the character, deaf to his cries, is begging “please, please, please” in return, coughing harder and harder and harder. Blood drizzles down the screen. Doktor reaches out to touch it and his fingers come away red now, perhaps not so simulated after all. He strikes the side of the computer and shakes it and click, click, clicks, but nothing happens, nothing saves him. There is only the heat of the patient's fever and the dry heaving as he chokes on pneumonia, bent over, collapsing, and Doktor lashes out too suddenly and spills his coffee, only it is blood that pours down from the edge of the mug, filling up the room like a flood –

He does not scream upon awakening. Only gags, and whimpers, and rocks in place, tears drizzling down his face.

Trickshot is hot at his side, trembling, coughing, conscious. Across the room, Anti's twins sleep side-by-side, hunger and fatigue making them ghostly in the moonlight, Blue touching Red with an out-stretched hand abandoned on his shoulder.

“Trick?” whispers Doktor, trying to ground himself again, trying to banish the dream. He would call it a nightmare but he's had far worse. “Trick, why are you awake?”

It's still dark out. It often is. Doktor guesses it is around three.

“What did you dream of?” mumbles Trickshot, staring up at him with over-bright eyes. “Something nice?”

He smiles a little flicker of a smile, his mouth trembling.

Doktor sighs, calming. Just a bad dream, right? He's not stuck. He's not frozen. He can take care of his patients. “Should not speak of it,” he tells him, pulling him straighter up, to help him breathe. Coughing must be keeping him awake. “You are weak. Go back to sleep.”

“I – I feel very weak,” concedes Trickshot. He sniffles and tears come running out of his eyes. Doktor presses a hand to his forehead and finds him burning. “Do you think Anti will let me die? Do you think he will kill me? Did you dream of something nice?”

“Stop, Trick, stop, stop.” Doktor smooths down a bandage hanging off his cheek from where somebody struck him hard enough to break flesh. “You're delirious. Don't upset yourself. Go back to sleep.”

“Something – b-bright and lovely, maybe something where you were happy, did you dream of – did you dream of something – ”

He begins coughing and must clutch at his heart, curling in on himself, agony coursing through his body. “Did you dream of something nice?” he stammers out, wheezing, working himself swiftly towards a complete breakdown. “Did you dream of – ”

“Trick, stop!” snarls Doktor, grabbing him by the throat in a sudden flash of fury. Trick gags and whimpers, collapsing against the floor, shivering in the cold night air.

Doktor releases his throat, a rare twinge of guilt making itself known in his stomach. As apology, he reaches out and touches the side of Trick's head awkwardly, frowning down at his blueing mouth. “You really are so sick,” he whispers, brushing down a strand of his sweaty hair. “Poor thing.”

“Don't feel good.”

“I know. Why don't you tell me what you dreamed of, huh? I don't want to talk about my dreams but you can. Did you dream of something nice?”

Trickshot pauses, biting his lip, and then nods, tears welling again in his bright blue eyes. “A baby,” he whispers.

“A baby?”

“A little dark-haired baby, so, so warm, so, so beautiful, and I was holding him and I reached out and he wrapped his tiny little hand around my finger and fell asleep in my arms.”

Doktor didn't mean to make him cry. Trickshot devolves into sobbing against his brother's stomach, shaking with fever and grief alike.

“Quiet, quiet,” begs Doktor, gripping at his shoulder. “Don't disturb him, don't make him angry.”

“My baby,” gasps Chase, growing closer to death. “I want my babies, I want my baby, where is he, where is he, where is he?”

“Stop, stop, don't say such things, Anti will kill you.”

“Anti will not give me my child back,” weeps Chase. “Not even the memory of him, not even his name. I can't remember my baby.”

“Trick,” says Doktor. “Trick.”

And then there is the static warning of their brother's appearance, and they both stiffen like scarecrows, curling in on each other as they wait for him to turn shadows into form.

Glitches split the air around them and Trickshot pretends to be asleep against Doktor's stomach, near to passing out anyway. Cold static rings through the air like a tornado warning.

“Clean him up.”

Anti is standing behind him so suddenly that Doktor nearly gasps aloud, rocking faster and faster. “C-clean Trickshot up?”

“No, you stupid little bitch,” snarls Anti. He grabs him by the hair and Doktor gasps hard enough to hurt the back of his throat, staggering upright. “Jameson. In the room on the other side of the house. Go. Let him die and you cannot imagine the pain I will inflict upon you, am I understood? Darling?”

“Yes, Anti.”

“Go.”

He releases him and disappears back into the shadow.

Trick lies at his feet, trying not to cough. Blood stains the corner of his mouth.

Doktor reaches down to touch him – but no, he cannot care for him, not now. He must go the missing piece.

Panting, he abandons Trick to his coughing and heads towards the spare room. They think it used to be a kitchen once, before the house was halfway demolished and then abandoned, but now there is nothing but missing tile and cockroaches and one drawer full of knives in the corner. There certainly isn't any food.

Jameson is chained to the porcelain body of what might have been a sink. He slumps back against the clay, his chin fallen onto his chest. He is breathing, but only slow, only thin.

Doktor approaches.

Littered with wounds, frail as a broken-wing bird. He coughs. Doktor cleans gashes and stitches them back together, wipes away blood and wraps up bruises, relocates a broken wrist and makes the boy scream, his eyes rolling back in his head as he staggers about between consciousness and shadow.

He coughs.

Doktor reaches out to touch his cheek.

He coughs.

Doktor swallows back memories of him.

Bright-eyed brothers moving like light through a window, clean whole faces and the steady rising and falling of the breast, a smile on the boy's unspeaking mouth –

He coughs.

He coughs.

He coughs.

Doktor buries his face in his hands and rocks, rocks, rocks, cries until he cannot breathe either; listens, despairing, to the coughing of his brothers, scattered like weapons cast aside through Anti's house.

How can this be worth it?

How can this pain be worth it?

From the darkness, Anti is watching.

Doktor was the first one to lose the fight to his power, and now he is the first to feel the strings loosening about his throat. Something must be done.

But he is too tired to drag Henrik back under.

“Give in.”

“I won't.”

Blood splurts from Jameson's throat. His mouth jerks open in a horrible silent scream and he writhes in Anti's grip, tearing at the hands around his neck.

“Is that the best you can do?” laughs Anti. He lets Jameson go, his arm growing tired from holding him up, and the boy collapses like a pile of flesh. “Really, no sound at all? Can't you wheeze or something? I'm bored.”

“Bitch,” signs Jameson. He rolls back and forth against the ground slightly, trying to work through the pain, trying to stop crying. He doesn't know how much more of this he can take.

“I'm about to cut your hands off if you don't watch your tongue,” Anti warns, sitting down beside him and drawing his head into his lap. “Come on, can't you whine or something?”

Jameson is bewildered on top of irritated now. “What the fuck do you expect me to do? Regrow my vocal chords? I can't vocalize.”

“Maybe you're not trying hard enough,” grins Anti.

Exhausted, exasperated, pissed, Jameson holds up his middle finger and lets that speak for him.

Anti hums and leans in close. Jameson shivers as he's kissed, Anti's mouth running feather-light across the stubble on his jawline.

“Get off me,” Jameson begs, trying to push him away. “Please.”

“That's better,” murmurs Anti. “Good job, puppy. Hold still and you can go in a minute.”

He kisses his cheek, beneath his eye. His mouth is hot.

“Get off me!” cries Jameson. Oh, fuck, suddenly he's so dizzy. “Get off, I hate you.”

Anti pulls gently at his shirt, exposing his stomach. Jameson squirms, frightened, but with one hand Anti can hold him steady. The other hand runs over his belly.

Then a knife, cold, cold, cold against his stomach.

Anti sighs against the base of his ear.

And then he jams his thinnest blade like a key between the perfect slot of his seventh and eighth ribs.

The noise that Jameson makes –

The noise, a braying little gasp, a broken little screech from somewhere in his lungs rather than his vocal chords, a choke combined with the movement that should make a scream, is not a noise that Anti realized human beings could make.

Anti wishes he had recorded it. He could play that on a loop and destroy civilizations with the high it gives him.

He's laughing so hard it hurts to breathe.

“Doktor!” he calls, shoving Jameson off his throat. The boy shudders against the floor, slamming his head against the cement as his body overtakes his brain, far more conscious than he'd like to be. “You're going to have to bandage this up for us, darling.”

Not long now. Not long.

“Please.”

“Shut up.”

“Please, please, H-E-N - ”

Doktor shoves him hard back against the porcelain sink to which he is once again chained. Jameson gags, weeping. “Brother,” he cries, undeterred. “Why won't you save me?”

“God, please!” Henrik screams. “Stop, stop, I can't take this!”

“Please help me, please help me, I'm scared, I'm scared, soon he will make me his, I can't take any more, please save me, I love you.”

Henrik screams and tears at his hair, falling back. He's been cleaning Jameson up every night for a week. They are both reaching breaking points.

“Deutsch!” cries a voice from downstairs. Red, he thinks. “Blue can't breathe!”

“Sit him upright!” he calls back, trying to raise his voice above a rasp. He tries to push himself back up to kneeling and a nail that once held floorboard pierces his palm, making him gasp.

“It's not working!” Red cries. “It's not enough!”

“Do you think I'm hiding oxygen up here?” Doktor shrieks. “What do you want me to do?”

Red is weeping. It's a new sound for Doktor, but he doesn't have time to care. Blue and Trick are just getting sicker, and Carver's going to get an infection if he doesn't bandage him up, and he never feels well anymore, and nothing is right, nothing is right, nothing is –

Jameson can only reach his brother's out-stretched hands. Teary-eyed, white as smoke, he grips Doktor's wrist gently and rubs his thumb up and down the veins at the heel of his hand.

“Stop,” says Doktor.

He doesn't draw away.

Jameson tugs his hand closer and presses his forehead to it, massaging his palm, holding him tight.

“Stop,” says Doktor.

Jameson shivers and clings to each one of his fingers, examining the valleys and ridges of his swirling fingerprints. Brushes against his veins from heel to thumb. Squeezes tight, tight, tight.

Doktor can't remember the last time anyway touched him gently.

“Stop,” he begs. “I can take no more.”

“Henrik,” says Jameson, releasing his hand to finally, finally make the name whole. “Henrik, brother, help me. Let's go. There's still time.”

The strings are slipping. The strings are slipping. The strings are slipping.

But they are still tight enough.

“I'm sorry, Jameson,” whispers Henrik.

“No, no,” begs Jamie. He tries to grab his hand again, but Henrik is drawing away. “I need you to remember who you are.”

“I'm sorry,” whispers Doktor. “I am. I'm sorry. But I am also Anti's. You don't understand what he would do to us if we tried to escape. There is no running away. He will haunt us for the rest of our days. Better to stay, and be good for him. I am Anti's.”

Jameson curls in on himself like a child, wrapping his arms around himself and hugging himself tight. He rocks against the sink, sobbing.

He's lost. He's lost. It's over.

“Soon you will be too,” promises Doktor softly. “And then...”

He knows he should say that things will be better.

But he can't lie.

This is a life of pain.

Twilight makes the floorboards grey and lilac. The air smells of dust, of blood, of starvation.

Doktor sits slumped over Blue, staring, corpse-like, down at him, bleeding sluggishly from the palm of his hand as he tends to his brothers' illnesses.

“They're going to die, aren't they?” whispers Red.

In his weakness, Trick has regained his favor, and both he and Blue are close at hand, tucked up in the only blanket in the house, shivering side-by-side, asleep. Trickshot wheezes with every breath.

Doktor can't even answer. He washes sweat from their foreheads and massages their chests with vaporub. Nothing else to fucking do.

“I can't – ” Red breaks off, covering his mouth, squeezing his eyes tightly shut. “I can't watch them die.”

Doktor hums a brief affirmation, staring blankly at Trickshot's hollowed grey cheeks. It's a little too late for Red to start caring.

“Deutsch,” whispers Red. He touches Doktor's hand.

Henrik jumps hard, turning to him with astonished eyes. Red's hand is gentle on his own. There are tears in his eyes.

“What do I need to do to save them?”

And Henrik recognizes, suddenly, a light that he had forgotten ever graced Jackie's eyes.

A protection in his outstretched hands, a courage in his stiffened mouth, a light in his bright blue eyes.

“Holy shit,” whispers Henrik.

Doubt. Doubt. Rebellion. It sits between them, curled in the heat of their fevering brothers and the wounds that litter the boy upstairs like constellatios, in the memories that sift, slow, patient, through their awakening hearts.

“Sauerstoff,” he manages, swallowing hard.

“What?”

“Oxygen,” he rasps.

“Where do I get that?”

“You will have to steal it. Once you stole computer code from the center of a secret Ministry of Defense facility just so Anti could elude them. You will be able to take oxygen from a hospital. Masks too, blankets, and medicine – bring me paper, I will write it all down.”

White and silent with stress, Jackie brings him the torn wrapper of their last jug of water, and Henrik scratches names into it, recalling, with the smell of hand sanitizer in his nose, what it was to be a real healer.

“You must go quickly,” he murmurs, pressing the wrapper into Jackie's hand.

“I know,” Jackie answers, soft. “If I'm not back before Anti realizes I'm gone...”

He will kill him. The words stand silent in the air between them.

Henrik can almost remember his name.

Henrik can almost, almost remember his name.

“Doktor,” murmurs Jackie.

“Red,” Henrik answers, exhausted.

His eyes say go carefully and Jackie's answer very well, as you wish, we were brothers once and in the memory I have forgotten the hatred he fostered within me.

Jackie squeezes his hand, kisses both Blue and Trickshot goodbye, and goes.

He knows he will be killed for the transgression of abandonment.

But his pain might be salvation, and the word “hero” rises once again in his mind, like a tattoo uncovered, impossibly forgotten, permanent, chosen, lasting.

Upstairs, Jameson grows weaker.

There isn't much time left.


	4. Chapter 4

Anti wakes up.

This is unusual for him, having never actually lost consciousness before. His waking thoughts consist largely of what the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck?

Did he pass out?

He's slumped downstairs on his little throne – hardly more than a blood-painted chair, but he loves it like a knife – and he doesn't remember falling asleep.

He's weak as a ball of cotton.

Panic rises in him like fire and he tries to get up, without success, panting hard. For a moment his whole body becomes as static, heavy and faraway. His tongue is leaden and stinging in his mouth and his head collapses back against the wood of his chair, leaving him motionless and terrified, fainted in his own throne room.

He's never passed out before, he's never been weak, he's never used so much energy, he didn't realize he had a breaking point and he needs to stop –

No! screams the rest of his brain. The dizzy spell recedes as a wave from the ocean and he staggers to his feet, snarling at the world around him, which continues to defy him. I won't be stopped now! I'm so very close. So very close to the perfect victory. Their stupid persistence can't stop me. I will hold all five of them at once, puppets from my hands.

He spares a burst of pure hatred for his creator, who gave him just enough brothers to be a challenge.

But not enough to stop him. He will be victorious.

“Doktor!” he screams, dragging himself to the bottom of his staircase. Deutsch appears shaking in the light above him, his eyes flashing quickly between all corners of the house. Anti can almost taste his disloyalty, but it does not matter. He must break his last little colt, and then he will reign in all five of his stallions, if it takes every whip in the world. “Bring my the little brat,” he hisses, sinking back into the darkness. “We end this tonight, once and for all.”

“Where,” whispers Anti, “Is your resistance now?”

Jameson lies shivering. Jameson lies shaking.

“I have shattered it,” Anti tells him. He reaches down, slow, and runs his knuckles across Jameson's cheek, scarred and blood-stained.

“You were not the one who shattered it,” Jameson answers, closing his eyes.

The demon stands above him like a shadow, pierced by thin beams of light forcing their way through the tiny windows at the tops of the basement walls. Blue and green eyes coat Jameson in a unique form of lust, a power-hungry possession, a wolf that has gained a taste for human flesh.

“You love your brothers very much,” murmurs Anti. “After all they have done to you.”

He sits down, criss-cross, at Jameson's side. Pulls him into his lap. Takes his hands into his own.

“Be mine,” he says. “And they will love you again too.”

“Is this what you call love?” Jameson manages.

He is slumping down against Anti's shoulder, exhausted.

“You don't know the first thing about love.”

“What a pity,” Anti giggles, grabbing his wrists and pulling him even closer. “I must be missing so much.”

Blood, blood on Jameson's face.

“Poor dapper darling, pretending to be strong. Your heart is broken and you've been dying for a long time, running from me every day, running from your family. Aren't you tired?”

Jameson is hiding against his chest. Tears soak Anti's shirt.

“Poor thing,” whispers Anti, wrapping an arm around his waist. “I know. It hurts. I know. Poor, poor dapper.”

Careful, he reaches power out. Feels Jameson's heart, racing with terror, so weak and so vulnerable.

He wraps a string and breathes through a wave of dizziness.

Jameson's hands tighten on his shirt.

“There you go,” whispers Anti, rubbing from his shoulder to the small of his back. “There you go, it's okay. Stop crying so hard, little one. Hush, hush. Here I am. Don't be afraid.”

“Anti,” signs Jameson. Anti does not know what he is begging for and he does not care. His sign name is a slit throat 'A' and it makes him laugh. “Anti, please.”

“Look at me,” Anti orders, taking his chin in his hand. “Look at me now.”

Jameson tries to hide, his eyelids fluttering. No, no, no...

“You're so tired.” Anti's fingers are soft, warm, loving against his face and throat and hands. “So, so tired, poor little puppy.”

And he is, so, so exhausted, so tired it could kill him. All he wants in the whole goddamn world is to lose himself in sleep, in power, in Anti...

“Look at me,” says Anti. He hates him, he craves him, he owns him. “Look at me, Carver, Dapper, Monochroma. Look at me.”

Jameson's eyes open. Dapper's eyes meet his own.

Hot, rushing, overwhelming, terrifying, ecstatic, adoring, all-consuming, all-consuming, all-consuming; Carver gasps and sinks down in Anti's hands, reaching up to be held, an agony of possession writhing through his body as he collapses like a bird dead in the air and languishes in the dark, endless eyes of his older brother.

Anti has him.

Carver blinks, and closes his eyes, and sinks.

Sinks like a mink sinks in the mouth of an alligator.

Down onto Anti's lap.

And when his brother traces his hands across his scalp, stroking gentle his downy brown hair, he breathes out a sigh of relief.

Anti has him.

Joy crackles as a current of electricity through his body and Anti smiles, letting himself curl down around Chroma's body, pulling his new little puppet to him, running his hands over his flesh, tasting the sweet copper taste of an implanted adoration, touching his fingers to each one of the cuts he has spent the last two weeks cutting into Dapper's skin –

A word of alarm flickers through his system. Anti sits up, his eyes fixed on the opening to the room.

There are footsteps coming towards him.

He tries to get up, but dizziness pounds through his simulated skull and he collapses back onto his throne, gripping at Carver's shirt. He over-exerted. Used too much power. He's never been so tired in his life. He could fall asleep right here, slumped over his little brother's body, holding his new puppet close... his eyes flicker and glitch and he sways, drifting...

“I can bear this no longer.”

Anti's eyes snap open.

In the doorway, Henrik.

Not Doktor.

Henrik.

Anti can't feel his hold over him.

He tries anyway. “Go back upstairs, Deutsch.”

Dapper shivers in his lap. Anti grips a knife warily, staring at Henrik's twilight silhouette.

“I can bear this no longer,” whispers Henrik.

“Arzt,” hisses Anti, glaring him down. “Go back upstairs. Now.” He strains his energy on the last word, reaching out for Henrik again, wrapping strings around his throat –

“Shut your fucking mouth,” hisses Henrik.

And stranger still is the look in his eyes, because, for the first time in his life, Anti doesn't understand the emotion that he's looking at in another's face.

“So,” he drawls, rubbing Dapper's back, just to mock this rebellious little puppet standing before him. “My strings got too loose, huh?”

Henrik moves forward. His hands tremble.

“Upstairs, two of my brothers are dying,” he says. “Red – no, Jackie – has suffered so much at your hands that for many long months he has desired only to be yours, so full of hatred we all bear his marks on our flesh. I myself have hurt for years now because of you. Have nightmared, have scarred over, have shattered like ice into crystal. And this boy you have given me to care for for the past week. Each time I saw his face, each time I held him, bleeding in my arms, I have regained a little of myself. That is not because of you. That is because of me. Your strings are looser, yes. But I am the one who tore them off. And that is because you know nothing. You think you know what pain is, Anti?”

He pulls from the pocket of his torn khaki pants a stained scalpel.

“Answer me,” he snarls.

Anti is glaring at him now, teeth bared and drizzling blood. His skin is green and his eyes are black. He is not human.

But he shares the mortal propensity to fear.

“Yes,” he hisses back, draping himself over Jameson's body like a wolf with a fresh kill. “And I will teach it to you for months and months and months, little one.”

“No!” screams Henrik. “No, you don't know the first goddamn thing! Not yet, Anti! Not yet!”

Anti needs to get up. He has to get up. He cannot glitch at all; his flesh is so still it is painful, but he must rise nonetheless, he must stand nonetheless, he can still get up, even in his weakened state, surely –

The weight of Jameson's sleeping body across his lap is too heavy for him to move. He cannot even put his hands on him. He is losing corporeality. He can see through his palms. This has never happened. This has never happened. This has never –

Fear tastes like copper, copper, copper, blood.

“Pain is love turned against you,” groans Henrik. “Brothers made to enemies and left to bleed on the seat of a bus, left to choke to death in abandoned houses, wearing belled collars and clutching at wounds that will never heal. You think you know what that is?”

“Henrik, get away from me,” hisses Anti. Electrical signals buzz distortedly through his brain, making the whole world too bright and too confusing. He coughs and blood comes welling up in his mouth.

“You will,” promises Henrik.

His eyes are consumed by darkness.

“I will teach you what it is. Because Anti, Anti, Anti! Pain is weakness and then, later, strength. I have suffered until the madness came, and arisen from it powerful, powerful, powerful. Be afraid, Anti. I will teach you what is pain.”

Anti's coughing pierces deeper and deeper as his body begins to glitch apart. The more he tries to blacken his eyes and consume Henrik's will, the more power he loses, and the more he falls apart. He cannot stop coughing. He cannot breathe.

“You are nothing!” he shrieks, nearly hysteric with mad fervor, with how goddamn close he is to having everything he's ever wanted! So many bodies strewn aside, so much corruption and patience, so much time, effort, planning, blood, torment! No, he will not lose now! He will tear this whole world apart if that is what it takes! “I will rip you apart like tendrils of dog meat!”

But Henrik is no longer afraid of him. He continues forward, staring into his black eyes, free of him.

“I will turn you against yourself,” he promises. Here is a threat to terrify, and Anti cannot help but shove himself against the back of his throne, straining away. “Tear you down into all the things you promised yourself you would never be. Kill you with your own blade. Oh, I've hated you for so long.”

“Oh, no, Doktor,” giggles Anti. At least there is some humor to be found in that. “No, no, no, you've loved me, adored me, prayed in my name for months now. Even before I used power to make you mine completely, you would beg for a scrap of bread as you starved, for a touch of comfort as the pain killed you, for someone to kiss you and wipe up the tears – ”

Henrik swings with the scalpel.

Anti's body finds the strength somewhere to glitch and he goes crashing to the cement, scrambling away from Henrik, hatred and blood welling from his mouth. He can't stop coughing. It hurts. “Red!” he screams. “Red, Blue, come here now!”

“They too have abandoned you,” hisses Henrik. “Their brotherhood overcomes your own.”

“Impossible,” Anti shrieks. “Impossible.”

“You are alone,” says Henrik. “As you were always meant to be. I told Jameson you were inescapable, do you know that? Strange. Just days ago, you seemed deathless. But I have been watching your collapse. You have made yourself mortal. Maybe you will haunt us, after all, a ghost, a memory. But you will never lay a hand on my family again.”

Anti coughs until he is sprawled against the earth, writhing in blood, in chunks of his own lungs, in hatred. He tries one last time to stop Henrik, and even makes him stagger back, confused, torn – but this lapse in control is enough to make the boy on the throne jerk back to reality, staggering to his feet and coming to stand at Henrik's side, grabbing his hand and assuring him, comforting him, standing with him.

Together, they are stronger than he is.

For all that they have suffered, Jameson and Henrik are stronger than Anti, stronger than hatred, stronger than blood.

Henrik raises the scalpel, and teaches his tormentor pain.

Teaches his tormentor weakness.

Jackie returns with medicine and food and masks and oxygen, filled with hero courage, hero strength, brother love. Marvin and Chase breathe. Anti does not.

Henrik and Jameson cling to each other.

No more running. No more fighting. No more abuse. Just family. Gone is the darkness. Here is the light, their stars, their brothers, alive.

And from then on, when pain comes and they are haunted, well, the five of them face it together, as they did once before, and some day, one day, soon, health and joy will come like sunlight in the morning, warm as the ashes of a fire proud and bright.

“You saved me,” says Jameson, warm against Henrik's shoulder, trusting against his chest. “You saved me.”

“No,” says Henrik. “You, little brother, are the salvation I have longed for.”


End file.
